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Maintenance teams often need to have difficult conversations if they rely heavily on
a reactive maintenance strategy. Even the most experienced teams view reactive
maintenance as an ad-hoc task. However, when used optimally with preventive and
predictive maintenance, reactive maintenance can drive down costs and improve
your maintenance regime.
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10/24/2019 Why Reactive Maintenance Can Be an Effective Strategy
There are benefits and disadvantages to using reactive maintenance as the only
form of maintenance. It requires less standby manpower, planning and initial cost
than other maintenance strategies. On the other hand, it can make it difficult to
create a budget and there might be large disruptions of workflow when
maintenance issues pop up unplanned, leading to poor time management, loss of
production, and distractions and disorganization in the workplace.
Generally speaking, it takes less money and time to wait for equipment to break
down then it does to perform routine maintenance. This is reactive maintenance.
However, using reactive maintenance on its own is a very short-sighted approach.
It can play an important role in a maintenance strategy for emergency situations,
but it should not be the focus of the entire operations and maintenance plan.
Relying exclusively on reactive maintenance is not sustainable in the long term. For
assets that are critical to production, quality, safety and service delivery, it’s better
to opt for a maintenance routine that includes elements of routine maintenance,
preventive maintenance and predictive maintenance. This is why using this strategy
in conjunction with a preventive or predictive maintenance schedule may provide
the best results.
With predictive maintenance, the aim is to predict future failures before they
happen, so maintenance issues are streamlined. This system uses sensors and
smart technology to collect data. When the data shows a piece of equipment is
failing, the system alerts the maintenance team before the equipment fails.
The benefits of predictive maintenance are the cost savings from reduced man-
hours and more insight into the equipment’s performance. In addition, relying on
sensors and the data they collect means maintenance is determined by the
condition of the equipment instead of the best-guess schedule set by preventive
maintenance.
The disadvantages of predictive maintenance are the high costs associated with
implementing the software and sensors, as well as the extra work that may be
required to get employees to use this advanced technology. The pros and cons for
each type of maintenance strategy are shown below.
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10/24/2019 Why Reactive Maintenance Can Be an Effective Strategy
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10/24/2019 Why Reactive Maintenance Can Be an Effective Strategy
as well as to weigh the risks of lost production time against those of a potential
breakdown. Employing all three maintenance strategies in tandem can provide a
real-time flow of information. This can allow for greater operational efficiencies by
using data to drive maintenance action for all types of equipment.
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